Dear Friends and Family,
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| Rob and Cher - enjoying the good life on our Fall Colors Cruise |
The time has come to write our annual Cornish update.
For weeks now, as Christmas emails have been steadily coming in, I’ve resisted
the urge to sit down and write. As my Dad used to say “there’s a right way and
a wrong way to do things”. This saying used to infuriate me because inevitably
what he really meant was that I had to do things his way. Anyway back to my
point. In my case, the right time to do our annual update is between Christmas
and New Year. All the major news of the year is behind us and ready to be
reported on and we are in that wonderful lull between the frazzledness of the
Christmas buildup and the final fling of New Year. So today is the right day –
the sun is shining on fields of open snow, it was -24 degrees this morning when
we awoke, so no chance of being tempted to go out and sit on the back deck
enjoying the sunshine.
2017 has been a relatively quiet one for us in terms
of major events. Having said that we have also found ourselves to be more than
fully occupied with more than one would ever imagine for a couple who are
supposedly retired. I’m beginning to realize that for us at least, retirement
means we have retired from being paid, but not from being busy.
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| Rob, Cher, Neville and Maureen did a short jaunt to a game park in S. Africa and saw lots of animals |
Our travel schedule this year, whilst not particularly
exotic, has been steady, with a variety of short term forays versus any major
long term trips. The one exception to that would be travel to South Africa,
where our plans, by necessity, needed to be flexible. In January and February, we
had planned to be visiting friends and family in South Africa for six weeks. Isn’t
this the retired persons dream – fun in the sun in January and February? Unfortunately
it turned out that our son in law Alex needed a second round of 6 weeks of radiation
soon after we were due to leave. This required Alex to be driven to Sunnybrook
hospital daily for his treatments. We decided that we needed to split up, with
Cher spending the full planned 6 weeks in South Africa, while I did a brief pop
in there for three weeks only, returning to help Alex and Elaine with the
routine at home and rides to and from appointments.
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| Sammy, Esther, Elaine and Alex taking in some of the Tulip Festival - Ottawa, May 2017 |
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| Niagara Falls from the Canadian side |
A couple of weeks later, Julia and her three boys and
us ventured out in our newly acquired eight seater KIA van to visit Niagara
Falls to meet up with our long time East London friends Boots (Chris) and Allie
(Alison) Horsfall. They were visiting their daughter Jenny, husband Jeff, and
three grandchildren, who had moved recently from UK and are now doing ministry in
Pennsylvania in the USA. We had agreed to rendezvous in Niagara Falls on the
USA side for a couple of days. Unfortunately Elaine and Alex were unable to
make it which was a pity as Jenny had been good friends of both Elaine and
Julia in our pre Canadian days in East London, South Africa and they hadn’t
seen each other for decades. For those who have not seen Niagara Falls, which
they hadn’t, it is a very impressive sight, especially when viewed from the
Canadian side, I should hasten to add. Us Canadians are typically known for our
low key modesty, but hey Cher and I have enough of the brash South African
still left in us that we can still flaunt it a bit. Boots and Allie were duly
impressed with the “Canadian Falls”.
In the spirit of making hay while the sun shines, literally, and making the most of summer, we booked ourselves and the RV into Beavermeade Campsite again for a week at the end of July. Julia and her boys joined us for a few days and Elaine, Alex Sammy and Esther also spent some time with us. We love these memory making opportunities and Beavermeade is a great spot to do it in, combining, beautiful surroundings, lovely beach, the boating activity of the Trent Severn Waterway and a variety of parks complete with splash pads. What more could one want?
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| Grandad and Nanna with their full team of chiddles, celebrating Canada 150. |
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| John, Sammy and Esther dressed up for their cowboy theme night at camp |
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| Canadian Country Cousins 2017 Collection |
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| Kerry, Lynne, Cher and Mom Tobin, enjoying the good life in East London, S. Africa |
No sooner did we finish our week at Fairhavens than
Cheryl got word that her Mom was not doing well in South Africa. On the spur of
the moment we decided that Cher should go and see Mom. Cher was on the plane
that night and was gone for 2- 3 weeks, which left Rob high and dry watching our
lawn guy cutting the grass each week. Fortunately Mom started to improve almost
immediately, so Cher got to spend a couple of good weeks with sister Lynne and family along with Mom in good and
improving shape.
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| L. to R. Ed and Andrea Zak, Alice and John Chase, Cher and Rob, Rose and Alan |
Our final travel fling for the year was a September
Fall Colors Cruise. The name of the cruise is a tribute to good marketing as
there was nary a Fall color to be found. Being a couple of weeks early and
primarily too far south didn’t help. We were joined by four other couples, my
two brothers Neville and Alan along with their spouses Maureen and Rosemarie
and Alice and John Chase and Ed and Andrea Zak. The cruise began in Quebec City
and then went out to sea via the St. Lawrence waterway to Prince Edward Island,
and then followed the Nova Scotia and New England coastlines down to New York,
stopping in at about 10 different ports over 11 days. It was wonderful to visit
so many ports that we have never seen. It was also great to meet up with our
group every evening over dinner to swap notes on our days adventures. In
addition we got some keen card playing going in our spare time. The on board
evening entertainment was exceptional most nights. The three siblings and
spouses ended our trip with a daylong train ride from New York to Montreal on the
Adirondack Amtrack line. This was our last shot at seeing fall colors which
once again was mainly a non-event. The funny part of this story is that both
Alan and Neville are color blind, so even if there had been colors, they would
not have seen them.
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| Our cruise dinner group met every evening for a debrief on the day's activities |
Early in the year the tenant in our basement apartment
had given us notice that she and her two sons were moving out. That gave us the
nudge we needed to get our apartment up to scratch to meet all of the town’s
fire and building code requirements to give us full and complete “legal” status, before our next tenant moved in. We had been
warned that this can be a hazardous exercise as between the Fire Department and
Township Building Inspectors they can be picky to put it mildly and extreme
pickiness converts in to costly dollars. I called the Chief Fire Officer to ask
him where to start. He was a nice guy. His advice to me was “Rob, I am
extremely busy, and don’t need any more work. Believe me you don’t want me to
come and inspect your apartment, as my requirements will be stringent. Just do
the best you can to make it safe and I’ll pretend this call never happened”. With
advice like that, we decided to go with the spirit of the law, “make it safe”
rather than get too bogged down with the letter of the law, which promised to
be tedious and costly. We called in a contractor and did our best to accord with
the safety regulations without going overboard. That cost us more than we had
anticipated, but were pleased with the outcome before our new tenants moved in.
Blow me down if in the Fall if we didn’t get a letter from the one and same Chief
Fire Officer (CFO), saying that “it has come to my attention, that you are
running an apartment in your basement and I need to come and inspect it prior
to you applying to the Township for legal apartment status”. I nearly died. The
CFO duly arrived to inspect and referred us to the township to get his recommended
work done. The bottom line is that Rob has now developed what seems to be a
good working relationship with the Building Inspector who is doing their best
to minimize the additional work we need to do, seeing that we have already done
a good job of trying to meet the spirit of the law. In January we are having to
give our tenants a month’s free rent, and send them to live elsewhere for a
month while we get the work done. It has not been a profitable year for the
apartment rental side of the Cornish financial empire.
We continue on with our work of welcoming new
immigrants to Canada. We have had three Syrian families join us in Port Perry
over the last twelve months. This has been a combined churches and community
project. Cher and I have joined two of the teams working with the families. It
has been wonderfully satisfying to be part of helping these folk begin to
rebuild their lives in this great country of Canada which has extended its
helping hand to generations of immigrants who have fled the various unhappy
circumstances which history has dished up to them. The husbands of all three
families are now working, rent is being paid, driving licenses are being
acquired, English spoken and kids settling into school well and in some cases
excelling. As the local community has teamed up it is amazing what can be
achieved. Each family is now well on the way to being integrated, contributing
members of society.
We continue on at our local church Emmanuel Community
Church. We both attend Sunday morning small groups before our Sunday morning
services. Rob does Service Leading about once a month and Cher continues to
serve on the Missions Committee which she has been part of for about twelve
years now. Together we lead a Welcome Team and Committee, which exists to make
newcomers welcome and encourage them to keep returning and become integrated
members of our church family. We have some success with this, but never enough.
Attracting and keeping young families is a major challenge. The future of the
church looks bleak if we don’t solve this riddle both locally and nationally.
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| The official published book. It won't make the bestseller list, but it was fun to do. |
In this, our first full year of retirement, Rob embarked on one of his bucket list items. He decided to write the
memoirs of our pre-Canada exploits in Southern Africa, complete with
photographs to liven things up a bit. He wrote it initially as a blog,
completing 17 chapters in all, which took us up to the time of our departure
for Canada in January of 1991. Each blog/chapter took at least 10 hours to
complete, so it turned into a major project. The intention all along, was that
this would be a gift to our girls and families to remember us by and the plan
was to turn it into a book which they would be given as a Christmas gift.
Turning the blog into a format suitable for publishing as a book was a pile of
work. We now have it figured out, so call us first if you want us to step you
through the process. For those wishing to read our pre Canada story it can be
found at www.robwithcher.blogspot.ca. The entries from April to November 2017
contain Chapters 1 to 17. The 200 page published book is too expensive to make copies of.
Rob is trying to maintain his fitness level. Due to time spent away from Port Perry, his local gym membership expired and never got renewed. He has now signed up for a membership in Markham, where Elaine and Alex live so that he can attend with Alex. For the first time he has signed up with a personal coach, who Rob feels bears a remarkable likeness to Attila the Hun, a man low in empathy and lacking in any grace or mercy. Despite this, Rob is already noticing an uptick in adoring looks from his none too easily impressed wife.
All that remains is for us to give an update on our
kids and rapidly growing grandchildren who are the delight of our lives.
Elaine, Alex, Sammy and Esther
Elaine continues to teach Bible in the Middle and High
School at People’s Christian Academy. She loves her teaching and particularly
her subject. It gives her great joy to be helping her students understand the
major themes of the Bible, giving them a foundation for life which most
Christians take a lifetime to acquire. She is busy to the extreme and we spend
quite a bit of our time each week, helping her to keep up with the treadmill demands
of teaching, house management, kids and husband.
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| Alex, Elaine and kids |
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| Esther, Elaine and Sammy all go off to school together - soon to be joined by Alex again. |
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| Sammy and Esther on their way to Awana, their weekly Bible Club |
We sleep over often
in Alex and Elaine’s basement where we are very comfortable and have enjoyed
the extra family time that has given us all. One of the side benefits is that I
occasionally have been assigned the task of overseeing Sammy and Esther’s piano
practicing. They make it look easy so I have decided to revive a long lost
opportunity and am hoping to start to learn the piano along with them with Elaine as my
coach and teacher. We’ll see how this New Year’s resolution pans out over time.
Sammy and Esther are both doing well at school and
maturing in a lovely way. They are both diligent students and destined for academic
prowess I’m guessing. They are kept busy between school commitments, soccer,
swimming, and ballet involvements and so on. Sammy loves to read and showed me
his 25 library books that he had borrowed recently.
Julia, Chris, John, James, and Peter
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| L. to R. Chris, James, Julia, Peter, John |
Julia made a momentous decision this year to
homeschool their children. Our provincial government, always on the leading
edge of “forward, progressive thinking” has recently introduced a sex education
program which makes me want to turn in my grave, and I’m not even there yet! Needless
to say, we are very supportive of her having taken this step, although it is a
major commitment on her part and not for the faint hearted. We too are part of this
project and contribute in a variety of ways most weeks. Julia, whilst stretched
is enjoying this and, by our estimates, doing a wonderful job of it.
Chris continues on with his work with a local software
company which is owned by large USA corporation. There has been a Christmas
takeover in the last week by an opposition company, which has led to what we all
hope and pray will be a limited staff reduction, which Chris was fortunate to
escape. Chris, like his boys is an avid Lego nut and they all spend many a
happy hour in the bedroom of their house that is dedicated to Lego projects!
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| John - sweet smile and keen mind |
John (5), continues to be a lively, interested and full of beans little boy. He is fascinated by the world of nature and is most often found with his nose glued to the ground observing his latest insect discovery. We have a large box of rubber dinosaurs and John is an authority on each of them, being able to name them and tell us what they eat and how they fight and move around.
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| James - Captain America??? |
James (4) lives in a world of imaginary characters and
super heroes. Without TV and movies on the topic, he has somehow acquired a
great depth of knowledge of these characters. He is most often found dressed up
in a costume portraying one of his heroes. His favorite costume is his cowboy
outfit, complete with hat and boots. On our trip to Niagara Falls earlier in
the year, Julia was requested on numerous occasions by tourists if they could
take a photo of James.
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| Peter - strong man with a big smile |
Peter (2), is a force of nature. Despite being almost
two years younger than him, Peter is almost the same size and weight as James.
He has been slow to speak, but fast to smile. He is beginning to speak now, but
has no problem in following the conversation and insert himself into the
action. He will often walk by one of his brothers and give them a playful “nudge”
which leaves them sprawling, followed by one of his mischievous giggles. His
most recent notorious exploit, was to upend about 15 of his cousin, Esther’s
jigsaw puzzles into a pile on the floor and then do his best to mix them all
up. That caused a bit of gnashing of teeth, by parents and grandparents.
Our final word on 2017 is for us to wish all of you God’s
richest blessings in the upcoming year. In whatever life brings you, we wish
you strength, patience, courage and gratitude.
With much love,
Rob and Cheryl
December 2017
Thanks Rob, a wonderful read. A pretty full year I would say. Can we order a copy of country cousins. You do such a great job!! ROSE
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